To mark Oxford International Women’s Festival 2021, The North Wall brought together two incredible women to discuss their artistic responses to their own personal stories of war.
About Diana Forster
Diana Forster completed her BA in Contemporary Fine Art at Oxford Brookes in 2017. Her exploration of art and conflict arose from her mother’s experiences in Poland in the Second World War.
Her mother was forcibly removed from her home in eastern Poland when Stalin’s troops invaded, and was transported along with an estimated 1 million other Polish people to labour camps in Arkhangelsk and Siberia. Diana tries to communicate the unimaginably shocking rupture between a settled, normal life, and a terrifying future decided by people who don’t care about you.
Her exhibition, Such a Long Journey, can be seen at The North Wall from 13 – 25 September 2021.
About Rana Ibrahim
Rana Ibrahim is an Iraqi archaeologist, a freelance artist and the founder of Iraqi Women Art and War (IWAW) project. She is currently working with Iraqi women based in Oxfordshire, helping them capture their oral stories of war survival through art. The project will culminate in a new exhibition, Of Ordinary Things, which will be exhibited online via IWAW website and exhibited physically at the Museum of Oxford later in 2021.
Rana has MA Museum Studies from Newcastle University in 2009, and works with GLAM at the University of Oxford, and recently worked at History of Science Museum, as a Collection Project Officer and part of a project team called Multaka Oxford.
